The romance of streetcars in San Francisco, Toronto and New Orleans came one stop closer to the Twin Cities this week, as the Federal Transportation Administration awarded a $900,000 grant to begin the final study of the first proposed Minneapolis line.

Minneapolis has been studying and preparing for streetcars for several years. A 2007 feasibility study identified 14 possible routes: Broadway, Central, Chicago, Como, Franklin, Fremont, Hennepin, Lake/Midtown Greenway, Lyndale, Nicollet, Penn/Highway 55, University, Riverside, and Washington. According to the 169-page final report submitted to the city in March 2010:

More than a dozen North American cities have streetcar systems that have either been expanded or initiated operation in the past 15 years. At least twice as many additional cities have new systems or new lines under active planning. Streetcars have become popular because they provide cities with the ability to add visible rail service with a capital cost that is much less than the higher capacity light rail. Streetcars are also popular because they are a good fit for densely developed, pedestrian-oriented, urban neighborhoods and activity centers. Many cities, including Minneapolis, were shaped by early streetcar systems, whose remnants can be seen today in the way streets and neighborhoods are laid out.

… relatively seamless integration of light rail with streetcars, buses, bikeways, and even an aerial tram (like a gondola). I was particularly impressed with how Portland has used the streetcar to revitalize economically depressed areas of the City and attract new housing and jobs back into the urban core. …

Portland uses the streetcar as a primary economic development tool, and the City touts the fact that along existing streetcar lines that cost $155 million to construct, they have seen more than $3 billion in private investment.

Stark is urging St. Paul residents to send him their ideas about possible streetcar routes.

Streetcars started as horse cars in the Twin Cities way back in 1872, with experiments in steam and even cable cars on steep hills on Selby Avenue and East 7th Street, according to A Brief History of Twin Cities Transit. Except for the two cable car lines, all of the streetcars ran on electricity by 1891, with 524 miles of track at their peak.

In other cities around the country, streetcars get more ridership than buses, attracting both tourists and commuters. Proponents say they encourage walkable cities and new development, as well as running cleaner and quieter than diesel-powered buses.

Follow News Day via Email

News Day

Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) provides health care for 9 million children and 375,000 pregnant women in working families who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough for private insurance. Working families like Bob Cratchit’s family. You remember Bob Cratchit. He worked for old Ebenezer Scrooge, and he didn’t make much […]

Old Scrooge, before he repented, thought the poor and disabled might as well die and reduce the surplus population. He would have loved this tax bill, which is likely to reduce the surplus population by, among other things, reducing access to chemotherapy for Medicare patients with cancer. The tax bill also eliminates tax deductions for […]

If you are confused about the “tax cut” bill, you are not alone. I took two semesters of tax law way back in the day, and I do my own taxes every year, so here’s my explanation of just one of the ways the “tax reform” cuts taxes but actually leaves you paying more.

Want to open the faucet and see brown, gritty, unsafe water? Move to St. Joseph, Louisiana, where the town’s water system is irreparably fouled by decades of neglect. The impoverished town is not alone, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting: “St. Joseph, population 1,029, is one of thousands of small towns across the country […]

UPDATE WITH CORRECTION 10/6/17 – see below: Yom Kippur is a day of fasting and repentance. It is a day to reflect on what we have done wrong in the past year, and to ask forgiveness. Unless you are the president of the United States. Then it is a day to attack anyone who dares […]